Alberta students will focus more on basic math skills, memorizing number facts and learning keyboarding skills early as part of the newly updated K-4 curriculum released by the provincial government Wednesday.

The back-to-basics approach comes after years of declining math scores and growing frustration with a math curriculum that parents said was too focused on discovery, analysis and group work instead of rote memorization as integral to understanding.

Other highlights include ensuring all students learn keyboarding skills by Grade 4 and start preparing for computational skills like coding as early as kindergarten. However, cursive writing will remain a mainstay, introduced in Grade 3 and continued through to high school.

Social studies will see a stronger focus on learning about local communities and local history with a more authentic look at European colonization and its impact on Indigenous people, including respecting diversity and differences. But the specifics of residential schools will not be taught until after Grade 4.

Physical education, as well, has been shifted into a larger health and wellness curriculum which includes physical activity as well as continued discussions about healthy relationships, respecting personal boundaries and introduction of the term “consent” as early as Grade 2. Human sexuality and development changes in the body will be introduced in Grade 4.

Education Minister David EggenPostmedia Archives

“We have developed a curriculum that is common sense, practical and in alignment with up-to-date research. This curriculum rewrite process has been open and transparent, and we have received more than 70,000 responses on our draft curriculum. We’re working hard to ensure that this curriculum focuses on the priorities of Albertans so it can set our students up for success in a fast-changing world,” said David Eggen, minister of education.

Alberta Education began work on developing new provincial curriculum in June 2016, with Albertans invited to give feedback through stakeholder meetings, town halls and online surveys.

Officials said Wednesday the new curriculum, to be approved by the minister in December and rolled out sometime next year, will specifically address concerns around discovery learning and focus on basics. Multiplication and division will be introduced one year earlier in Grade 4, with a stronger focus on memorization, recalling facts and competencies that must be met without the use of a calculator.

But one parent lobby group who read the new rollout online says the language is too vague and makes no assurances that basic skills and memory recall will be a priority.

“I don’t see any specific outcomes in the language that ensures those competencies,” said Sarah Bieber, spokeswoman for Kids Come First.

“In fact, if anything, it feels like they’re doubling down on a lot of concepts, like experimentation, discovery learning and it still just looks like less numeracy.”

Bieber referred to the Grade 4 section of math understanding, competencies and numeracy which repeatedly states that students must “use refined multiplicative thinking strategies” to solve problems as individuals or in groups but makes no reference to memory recall.

But Greg Jeffery, president of the Alberta Teachers Association and former junior high math teacher, said in spite of the open-ended language in the curriculum teachers will focus on the basics.

“Teachers understand the value of being grounded in the basics. Perhaps there was a feeling in the past where we weren’t allowed to go in that direction. But I like that the language is less prescriptive and now we can go in that direction.”

Financial literacy and learning about money will also be a focus in the new math, but will also blend into other curriculum including social studies and health and wellness, including discussions about separating wants from needs in the early grades.

A renewed focus on numeracy will also include early preparation for computational thinking, including more work on sequencing, patterns and problem-solving.

Eggen and Alberta Education officials will host telephone town halls to discuss the draft K-4 curriculum next week, Oct. 16 for northern Alberta and Oct. 17 for southern Alberta, with call-ins starting at 7 p.m. Those interested can pre-register by visiting education.alberta.ca/curriculum-development.

The targeted timelines for ministerial approval of curriculum in the remaining grades include December 2019 for Grades 5-8, and December 2020 to December 2022 for Grades 9-12, depending on the subject area.

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